No its not. Pushing the most draconian gun control measures you can think of is not a really good way to get to a solution.
This isn’t a negotiation where you pick some crazy outlandish starting position and negotiate your way to some middle ground. This is not a situation where the more extreme your initial position, the more you seem to be conceding during negotiations.
The gun rights side are content withy the status quo, extreme proposals are not generally the way to convince people who want to maintain the status quo even if they think things could be improved.
We have been over this several times. The NRA is largely funded by its members. We have seen the financial statements that prove this.
The gun manufacturers don’t control the NRA. If anything it is the other way around. The NRA forced Smith & Wesson to change its behavior when the NRA boycotted them for doing things that the NRA thought undermined the NRA’s goals.
Have you seen any proposals recently that aren’t what you would classify as “extreme”…or are all proposals of that sort automatically “extreme” in your view?
Would it make any difference if I could show that the murder rate (not just the gun murder rate) dropped at about the same rate in Australia (with a gun ban) as it did in new Zealand (without a gun ban)?
Gun murders dropped precipitously around the world over the last 40 years. If we used correlation between murder rates and gun control to determine the effect of guns on murder rates, we would have to conclude that more guns actually reduce the gun murder rate in America as gun laws have relaxed over the past few decades.
It just seems that way to you because you are wedded to your ideas.
The NRA has proposed letting people carry in places where these mass shootings take place (places that are generally unsecured but where guns are banned). You don’t like it? Well, obviously you don’t want to do ANYTHING to address the problem.
I have (along with Lyndon B Johnson) proposed licensing and registration. a common response is that this would be a good starting place, and then people wonder why gun rights folks think registration is just a first step towards confiscation.
Is the author under the impression that anti-gun states don’t pass laws that are meant to do little more than impede a person’s ability to exercise their right to bear arms?
I think there are a lot of similarities between abortion rights and gun rights. A few notable exceptions include the fact that the right to bear arms is explicitly stated in the constitution rather than being gleaned from the “penumbra” of the constitution.
Now, now-Let’s tell the whole story, about how the rest of the gun manufacturers got pissed off at Smith & Wesson for wanting to institute safety measures, and used their mouthpiece(the NRA) to slap them down.
It depends. I think its regional and the attitude of the cops often reflect the laws that are already on the books.
So a NYC cop is going to be against gun rights because they are used to that and they can just assume that anyone with a gun is a criminal.
A cop in Virginia is pretty sure that making guns illegal is going to do nothing to prevent criminals from getting guns and he can’t be everywhere at once so giving people the means to defend themselves seems like a good idea.
Judging from cop websites, it seems like cops are generally in favor of the right to bear arms.
I don’t think there is a police chief in the south east United States that is in favor of gun control. I think there are a lot of rank and file police officers in places like NYC and Chicago that are in favor of it.